


The Imprisoned Princess and The Dragon's Curse

by ToxicTraitor



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Dragons, F/M, Princes & Princesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-02 23:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12736218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicTraitor/pseuds/ToxicTraitor
Summary: Rin is a lonely princess that is locked away in a tower by her father to protect her from harm.  However, she tries to escape to taste whatever small chance of freedom she can have.  During her night out in the woods after escaping for the first time, she runs into a terrifying beast that is either friend or foe.





	The Imprisoned Princess and The Dragon's Curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rose_Bride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_Bride/gifts).



> Hi there, Rose! I really hope you enjoy this fic. I put a lot of work into it. Your prompts were really cute but this is the one that I thought would be the best to give to you.
> 
> Please enjoy it!

Rin can feel the heavy stone bricks crumble underneath her fingertips.  These walls have been here for too long that they were beginning to wear away.  She can hear the tiny pitter patter the loose particles of brick make as they hit the ground near her feet.  She peeps around the corner again, praying silently that no guard was watching her.  

 

“Did you hear something?” One guard asks the other.

 

“No.” The smaller of the two replies. “Just the wind.”

 

Rin can almost swear that the smaller guard stares right at her for a second before he turns away to talk the the other guard again.  Her heart sprints wildly.  She knows that if she's caught out here that she'll never see the light of day again.  She holds her breath, trying to calculate her chance of escaping.

 

“Apollo.” The small guard says. “I think I see something in the courtyard over there.  We better check it out.”

 

“No.  I will go.  You stay here and keep watch over the Princess.” Apollo orders before he leaves.  Rin watches as his massive shoulders and heavy footsteps disappear down the hallway into the darkness of the shadows.

 

Another moment passes with Rin holding her breath.  She doesn't know what to do.  She knows that the guard has seen her.  She knows she's been caught.  She knows that he knows she's there but why hasn't he said anything?

 

“Princess.” The small guard calls. “I can see you standing there.  You better go back to your chamber if you don't want Apollo to drag you back there himself.”

 

Rin steps out to face the small guard. “No.  I want to go out.”

 

“Your father forbids it.”

 

“I am the Princess.  I have the power to order you to do as I say.  I order you to let me go out.”  Rin stands as firm as she can for someone shaking so much.

 

“I can't.” The small guard shakes his head.  “Your father gave me an order to protect you.  His orders come before yours.”

 

Rin raises her fist to hit the small guard in his shoulder.  She doesn't care that he's taller or stronger.  She's willing to fight him for her freedom if she must.

 

“Apollo is on his way.” The small guard’s eyes sparkle in the dark, shining a shade of bright gold. “If you want to go out, I won't stop you.  Just return in one piece or your father will have me impaled in front of the Kingdom.”

 

Rin stares for a moment, shocked at how easy it had been to persuade him to let her go.  She takes her chance to run before he can switch around or change his mind.  She runs down the hall, out into the back gardens and through the small hole beneath the surrounding fence that was no bigger than the rabbit that had dug it.  

 

She doesn't know where to go.  All she knows is that she feels so happy to be outside and free.  She feels giddy, giggling to herself as she touches the trees around her, enjoying the soft squish of moss underneath her fingertips.  She kicks off her shoes and stands barefoot in the grass.  She hasn't felt the earth since she was a child.

 

The air is so crisp and chilly, it feels so refreshing on her skin.  She loved being outside.  She loved the way the moonlight found a way to shine through the thick umbrellas of trees down to shine on her face and hands.  She breathes in, enjoying the taste of the dew still lingering in the air.

 

She doesn’t understand why her father would forbid her from all of this.  

 

She doesn’t remember how old she was when he decided to lock her away in one of the towers of their grand castle.  Maybe she had been four or five back then.  He locked her away and since then, she’d stare out the window at the moon every night, wishing on every single star in the sky, the brightest and the dullest, to please set her free.

 

Tonight was the first night in so long that she’s been blessed with the moonlight’s kiss, the fresh air in her hair and the wet grass beneath her bare feet.  She didn’t want it to end but she knew she’d have to go back soon.  She just wanted to savor her freedom a little longer.

 

She ends up travelling down a dirt path through the woods.  She listens to the scurry of frightened rabbits and deer as they ran from the sound of her footfall.  She trails her fingers over tree bark as she walks, the texture is rough under her sensitive fingertips.  The refined, polished wood that made up her bed was made from trees but it had lost all its life in exchange for an echo of its former self.

 

She loses herself in thought.  Her mind wanders just as her feet do.  She doesn’t realize that she’s met a clearing until the sudden bright moonlight stings her eyes.  She lifts her hand to shield her eyes from it until they can adjust to it.

 

At first, she see a quiet, bubbling stream.  Its water runs so smooth, so clear and sparkling through the clearing.  It’s a beautiful sight to see.  She walks forward so she can clean her hands in the water.  Just as she takes a step, she notices the silvery shimmer of scales.

 

Her first thought is that it’s a snake.  She holds still, fear taking root in her heart.  In all her dreamy wonder, she had forgotten that predators waited out here too, waiting for her to slip up so they could take their turn to pounce on her.  

 

Whatever the scales belong to, it’s far too grand to be a snake.  Snakes were usually so much smaller.  She’s seen Apollo hold them whenever they slithered into the castle grounds before he took them off to kill them.  

 

She swallows.  Maybe she had been wrong to defy her father.  He wanted to protect her from this, he promised her that whenever she begged to go out.  Now she was in a clearing alone with whatever beast laid before her.

 

The beast lifts its head lazily.  She must have disturbed its slumber.  She backs away, wondering if she could still escape.  As she stumbles back, the heel of her foot catches in an upturned root and she trips.  She falls backwards, she tries to catch herself and ends up scraping her palms.  

 

The beast turns to her, curious.  It stares at her with eyes that looked so strangely human.  Bright blue, blue as the ocean she saw only once in her life when her mother had passed, gleams in the moonlight.  The beast casts its eyes on her, staring at her so deeply that she felt almost as if she had her entire soul violated.

 

The beast begins to lumber its way over to her.  Her hand gropes at the ground, trying to find something to fight back.  A twig, loose pebbles, in the end the best weapon she can manage is a stone.  She raises it to hit him with.  She doesn’t hesitate, she lets it fly from her hand to hit the beast in the head.

 

The beast’s eye merely twitches as if the stone had been nothing more than a butterfly brushing against its skin.  It continues to lumber towards her, its footsteps cause the ground to tremble.

 

Rin covers her face.  She knows it means nothing when she compares her arms to sharp claws and sharper teeth, but she at least hopes that it will save her from watching her own death approach her.

 

She can hear the beast breathing.  It pants, its hot breath washes over her as it gets closer.  She tries to hold in a scream but a small whimper just barely slips past her lips.  The beast nudges her arm several times before it pulls back.  Rin hesitantly lowers her arms to stare at the beast face to face.

 

What a dumb face, Rin can’t help but think despite the situation.  Wasn’t this supposed to be a great terror?  Instead, the beast stares at her like a playful puppy that wanted a friend.

 

It sticks its tongue out, panting like the guard dogs did when they were little things with no training.  It rolls back onto its haunches and cocks its head at her.

 

“Get away from me.” Rin orders.

 

The beast’s pointed ears drop disappointedly.  It walks away to the other side of the clearing and lays down without any disobedience.

 

Rin stares at it, trying to find out what kind of creature it could be.  Its scales shimmer in the moonlight, shifting between hues of blue and silver.  It’s massive, bigger than any bear that she’s ever seen in the collection of hunting trophies her great grandfather had displayed throughout the castle.  It looked twice as big or maybe even triple.  Its body looks streamline, fast and quick like a fish through water.

 

The beast yawns and Rin gets a glimpse of its teeth.  Sharp and long, like a wolf’s or cat’s teeth. set in a muzzle like jaw.  Its claws somehow can put its teeth to shame.  Its claws look like ram’s horns from their mere size alone.  Rin didn’t even want to consider how sharp they may be.

 

The entire creature looks horrifically deadly.  Rin was sure that it could kill her in one single swipe of its long tail alone, not even considering its sharp teeth and claws.  Yet, its face said otherwise.  

 

It didn’t have serpent’s eyes.  Its eyes looked ernest, almost human.  The color was a deep ocean blue during the calmest of days.  The beast stares back at her, maybe it was trying to calculate what she was too.

 

Rin stands up, brushing dirt off her dress.  She hesitantly walks to the beast.  She holds out her hands palms up to show that she meant it no harm.  As she approaches it, she realizes that the beast has two wings folded against its body.  One looks horribly bloodied.  For a moment, Rin freezes as she thinks that the blood must belong to its prey.  However as she looks closer, the wing itself looks bent out of shape, it was the beast’s own blood.

 

“Oh, you’re hurt.” Rin mumbles.

 

The beast whimpers as if it understood her.

 

Rin gets onto her knees so that she can inspect the wounds a little further.  She thinks she can help the beast clean itself off in the stream.  Even if it was a terrifying monster of a creature, Rin didn’t think that it deserved to be in pain.  Maybe she could try to help it.

 

“Let me clean you off.” Rin suggests.  

 

The creature lumbers towards the stream.  It sits in it, causing the water to ripple and flood around it as if it were a dam.  

 

Rin lifts the skirt of her dress up, tying it into a knot so it wouldn’t get soaked in the water.  She wades in after the beast and very gently begins to clean off its injured wing.

 

“There.” She says quietly as she pours clean, cooled water over the bloodied scales. “That’s better, right?”

 

The beast snorts in agreement.  It nuzzles her side gently.  

 

Rin continues to wash the creature gently.  She loses track of time and soon enough, she can see the sun start to peek up over the horizon.  She jumps up in shock, she had to run home or else she’d be in trouble.

 

“I’m sorry.” Rin rushes. “I need to go home now.”

 

The creature doesn’t have time to react before she’s running through the woods again.  She runs as fast as her feet will carry her.  She’s out of breath by the time she reaches the gate.  By the time she sneaks back into her room, she feels ready to pass out.  As soon as she lays in bed and as soon as her head hits the pillow, she falls asleep.

  
  
***

 

Rin wakes up to the touch of a hand against her shoulder.  She jumps up in bed, shocked and disoriented.  How long had she been asleep?  Was she still wearing the clothes she had run off in?

 

She turns to find the small guard staring down at her.  He hands her a new set of clothes and a glass of clear, drinking water.

 

“You should change out of that.  If your handmaid sees the dirt, she’ll know you’ve been wandering outside and then I’ll lose my head.” He says before he turns out the door to leave.

 

Rin mumbles a small thank you as he closes the door.  She changes quickly and drinks half of the water while the other half is used to clean her face and hands.  She’s still exhausted.  She is sat at her vanity mirror and beginning to doze off when her handmaid hurries through the door.

 

Her handmaid is a whirlwind of an endless stream of words, ranging from Rin’s duties for the day to scolding her for every hair out of place.  By the time she has Rin as prim and proper as a tightly curled rose bud, Rin has managed to droop off to sleep.

 

“Today you’re allowed free range of the library.” The handmaid announces, knowing that it will be the key to capturing Rin’s lost attention.  “Even the storybooks.”

 

“Even the storybooks?” Rin wakes from her drowsiness, suddenly excited again.

 

“As long as you study your Geography for an hour today.” The handmaid explains.

 

Rin jumps out of her chair excitedly before she skips down the hall.  She hears her handmaid call out that princesses do not skip and should walk, but Rin was too happy to care to listen.

 

Rin carelessly reads through her Geography.  She looks through maps to memorize the neighboring kingdoms and then she reads about the types of flora and fauna that lived in her kingdom.  A princess needed to know these things, she guessed.

 

When the hour is up, she excited pulls out a book of fairy tales to read.  They were always her favorite things to read.  Her mother used to read them to her before she had passed.  Not long after she had left this world, Rin had been locked away.  In some ways, Rin feels as if she had left this world too and fell straight into the pits of Hell.

 

When she read these stories, she felt as if her soul had been transported back to happier times when she was just a happy child at her mother’s feet.

 

Of course, her favorite tales have changed since then.  Back then she loved the stories about miracles and magic.  Now she favored stories about the adventures she longed for and stories of a handsome prince rescuing the fair maiden.

 

Her favorite story was, no doubt, Rapunzel.  It was a story of a girl locked away in a tower before she is rescued by a prince and whisked off to a happier life.  She wanted so badly to be that girl.  She wanted someone, anyone at all, to come and save her from this prison of a home.

 

Her fingers trail over the pages, worn with age.  The pictures in them are faded but they’re painted so beautifully.  She lingers over the warps in the paper from where she had cried into them.  Her tears had stained the pages, leaving small splotches of bled ink across all the pictures and words.

 

She stares at the maiden’s saddened face, the evil mother’s glare and the prince’s noble stance.  She flips through the pages, stopping dead when she sees the creature that coiled and curled around the tower to prevent the prince from being the maiden’s hero.

 

The wings, the scales, the slender and long body…  The creature she saw in the clearing looked so similar to this imagery that her hands begin to shake with clear certainty that the beast she saw had to be a dragon.

 

Dragons were always written as fearsome, terrifying creatures with a bloodlust that could never be quenched.  She’s read so many fairy tales with heroes who must slay and conquer the dragon to save the day.

 

The dragon she had seen today had been so much different…  It wasn’t a horrific monster, at least it didn’t act like one.  It acted like a puppy that wanted nothing more than to explore and play.

 

Rin loses herself in thought and before she knows it, the sky has turned dark and she’s being called for dinner.  She sits at the table, barely listening as her father, Leo, and her older half-brother, Reiji, discuss war strategies to use on the neighboring kingdoms.

 

“Nychros’ heir has gone missing.” Reiji says quietly.  “Their Duke has accepted the role of King in their heir's place after their last King has passed.”

 

“I've heard.  It is a shame to hear.  We should sent them a gift as condolences.” Leo replies.

 

“We were blessed with many new horses this year.  We could sent over twenty and still have enough for our army.” Reiji suggests.

 

“Yes, yes.” Leo agrees.

 

Rin loses herself in thought again.  Her mind wanders back to the dragon she had met.  If she left to see it again tonight, would it still be there?

 

She gets ready for bed like she normally would every night.  She debates trying to escape again and decides it’s worth a shot.  She changes into new clothes and stuffs her bed full of pillows and her sleeping gown, so that if the guards peeked in, they would think she was just asleep.  When she’s sure that her handmaid has gone to bed, she sneaks out her door and down the hall.

 

She thinks she manages to sneak pass both her guards successfully this time.  She runs through the garden, back out into the thick woods and into the clearing she already loved so much.

 

She pants, trying to catch her breath desperately.  She ran so fast and pushed herself so hard to try and escape that she didn’t stop for anything, not even to take a deep breath.  Her eyes search for the dragon, falling onto silvery scales.  Her breathing stops, even though her lungs begged for more air.

 

The dragon stares at her, confusion clear in its almost human eyes.  

 

“You’re a dragon, aren’t you?” Rin asks, breathlessly.

 

The dragon nods happily at her.

 

“You can understand me?” Rin wonders.

 

The dragon nods again, jumping up in excitement.  Its tail wags like a happy puppy waiting for a treat.  It trots over to her and plops itself down near her feet.  It nuzzles its nose into her stomach.  She loses her balance momentarily before she catches her footing again.

 

“Hey, be careful!” Rin scolds. “You almost pushed me over.”

 

The dragon pulls its head away, almost as if it were pouting.

 

“Do you have a name?” Rin wonders.  After she asks, she wonders why she asked it.  It was a dragon, did they even have names?

 

The dragon, however, simply nods excitedly.

 

“You do?” Rin asks, dumbfounded.

 

The dragon nods again, jumping up to a patch of dirt by the stream.  It stares at the ground for a moment before it begins to scratch at it.  Rin walks over curiously.  The dragon somehow managed to write what looks like letters into the dirt.

 

“Yuu… Ga?” Rin tilts her head in confusion.

 

The dragon stomps angrily, scratching at the dirt again before it gives her a pointed look.

 

“Yuugo.” Rin reads.  “That’s your name?”

 

The dragon nods, happy again.

 

“My name is Rin.” Rin says. “It’s nice to meet you, Yuugo.”

 

Yuugo wags its tail happily at Rin.  It makes a sound that sounds like a satisfied grunt.  Yuugo then proceeds to lay on the ground, rolling over until it was on its back.  Rin notices an angry mark across its stomach, stretching out longer than her arm.

 

“What happened to you?” Rin wonders as she reaches to touch the mark.  She doesn’t even hesitate to touch the dragon anymore.  In all her excitement, she’s forgotten all her fear.

 

Yuugo chuffs at her, whining as she runs her fingers over the scar.

 

“It looks like you’ve been through a lot.  Your wing is injured and you have this big scar too.  You must be a really strong girl.”

 

Yuugo seems to glare at her.  Its jaw seems set in a defying pout.  How did a dragon manage to seem so human?

 

“Boy?” Rin tries to correct herself.

 

The dragon nods at her.

 

“So, your name is Yuugo.  You’re a dragon and… you’re a boy.” Rin lists off.

 

Yuugo nods, pulling off what Rin thinks is a goofy, lopsided smile.

 

Rin nods to herself.  Somehow she learnt so much about this terrifying creature in such a short time.  If she couldn’t taste the crisp fresh air on her tongue and feel the cool dew on her shoulders, she’d swear that she was dreaming.

 

She yawns.  Dreaming…  She hasn’t gotten much sleep at all.  She feels so drowsy that she could fall asleep on her feet.  Yuugo nudges her, encouraging her to sit down so he can place his head in her lap.

 

“Maybe I’ll close my eyes for a few minutes.” Rin mumbles to herself.  “You must be lonely, after all.  I can keep you company for a while.”

 

A few minutes turns into hours.  When she opens her eyes again, the sun is starting to rise.  She panics, jumping to her feet, startling Yuugo as she stands.

 

“I have to go home!” Rin panics.  “I’m so late!  My father will lock me away forever!”

 

Rin doesn’t even take time to brush the dirt off her clothes or even to say goodbye to Yuugo.  She starts running as fast as her legs can carry her to make it home before anyone will notice that she’s gone.  She stumbles over roots and rocks, nearly tripping each time but she’s going too fast that her feet catch her balance before she can fall.

 

When she gets home, she sneaks back into her room where she collapses on the floor in exhaustion.  She sits there, sweating, trembling and gasping, until she can see the sun peek up from behind the mountains in the distance.  She stands and pulls at her clothes to remove them.  She needs to change into something clean before her handmaid walks in.

 

She pulls on her sleeping gown and climbs into the bed.  She falls asleep without much trouble, since she had nothing but exhaustion running through her veins.  At some point, she thinks her handmaid comes in to wake her but she’s too tired to get out of bed.

 

She sleeps through the night until the next morning.  She wakes with a jolt.  Confused and groggy, she gropes the bedsheets to try to understand her surroundings.  She doesn’t know how long she’s been asleep or what’s happened.  She could have slept for minutes or even days.

 

“My Princess!” Her handmaid exclaims happily.  “You’re awake!  You’ve slept through the whole of yesterday.  The dust in the library must have made you sick.  I’ll bring you some hot tea.”

 

A whole day, Rin thinks to herself.  A whole day and night have passed.  She didn’t go to see Yuugo last night.  She wondered whether he was okay or if he would even still be there.

 

She decides to sneak out again that night.  She changes into the clothes she had worn the last time she had seen the dragon and stuffs her blankets the same way.  There’s no way that she wanted to be caught.  She couldn’t risk it, especially now that she knew of the mythical beast that laid in the clearing.

 

She holds her breath as she enters the place that they had met.  She’s scared that he won’t be there.  She looks frantically for him, finding him resting in the moonlight.

 

“Yuugo!” She cheers gleefully.  “You’re still here!”

 

The dragon snorts at her, trotting towards her joyfully.  He doesn’t stop until his head is snuggled into her chest.  She hugs his head tightly.  She’s known him for such a short time but she feels so attached already.

 

She spends that night and every night after that for weeks telling him about her life.  She tells him about her mother and how wonderful she was until she passed away.  She tells him about her princess duties that require so much endless studying.  She even tells him about the marriage proposals she gets all the time from so many princes that were looking for a wife.

 

Most of all she tells him how sad she is to be a prisoner in her own home.  She tells him about how she misses the grass, the flowers, the stars in the sky, the rain… the wind…

 

She misses the wind most of all.  She misses the way it feels in her hair and on her skin.  She misses the way it carries the scent of rain, of nature, of bread baking in the distance.  She misses feeling alive and carefree.  She misses the feeling of being free to be herself.

 

Whatever she says makes Yuugo snap.  

 

He chortles to her until she climbs onto his back.  He nudges her on until her legs can wrap around his neck.  Before she can realize what’s happening, Yuugo takes off in flight.  

 

She’s too shocked to scream in terror at the speed or the height that they flew.  She’s too scared to let go of him.  She hugs him so tight that she thinks that she must be choking him to near death.

 

When her fear finally subsides, she opens her eyes that were shut tight with terror.  From up here, she could touch the clouds and see all the stars.  She reaches out to touch one of the clouds as they pass by it.  It’s soft and melts away in her hands, feeling like the air after a rainstorm.  There’s no tangibility to it, it feels like a withering dream under her fingertips.

 

She can feel the wind blow through her hair, catching every strand, shaking it wildly behind her.  The air up here smells so clean and fresh.  It feels so cool, not like an icy chill but more like the coolness of a gurgling stream.  She can feel electricity in the air, as if the sky was gearing up for a rain storm.

 

She doesn’t want it to end, but Yuugo returns to the clearing.  She steps down and off of him, wiping away the tears that collected in her eyes.

 

“Thank you, Yuugo.” She mumbles.  “That was beautiful.”

 

Yuugo gives her that dragon’s smile as he lays down to rest.  She decides to take the opportunity to bathe in the stream before she heads home.  It would help tame the mess her hair had become and hopefully tame her wildly beating heart.

 

As she strips down to her undergarments, she notices that Yuugo is staring.  She blushes, even if he were just a dragon, his stare felt too heavy.  Yuugo turns his head away quickly, tucking his head under his tail for good measure.

 

When she’s clean and dressed, she gives him a kiss goodbye.  She kisses him between his dragon eyes before she skips back home to sleep until sunrise.

 

Waking up the next morning is hard but she sets off to do her daily duties as usual.  Today involves more studying, this time about dinner etiquette and about horse training.  The horse training is, of course, all theory.  She isn’t allowed near the horses.  Studying them just seems pointless.

 

Dinner is a welcome end to her evening.  She’s hungry and their chef prepared some roasted duck with pears and figs in a heavy sauce that Rin loved.  Part of her wondered if there was a special occasion tonight.  She never had dinner like this unless it was her birthday.

 

“Rin.” Her father calls her name so sternly she wonders what she did wrong.  She paced herself at dinner, trying to play up the ladylike persona she had to carry.

 

“Yes, Father?”

 

“I’ve decided that you’re old enough.” He begins.

 

Rin’s heart starts to race at his words.  Maybe he’d let her go outside again and she could stop sneaking around like a petty criminal.

 

“Prince Yuuri of the Ifnous Kingdom has asked for you hand in marriage.  I’ve accepted his offer.”

 

Rin’s heart stops dead in her chest.  Prince Yuuri?  Of all the princes far and wide, why him?  Rin has hated him from the moment they had met.  He had done nothing but bully her throughout their childhood.  She’d rather spend forever locked in her tower than to be his wife.

 

“No!” Rin argues, standing up in rage. “I won’t marry him!”

 

“He is the heir to the throne.  If you marry him, you’ll become the Queen of Ifnous.  It is a great honor to be a Queen.  I’ve raised you your whole life waiting for this kind of opportunity.  Do not waste it.”

 

Rin knows that arguing is pointless.  Her eyes swim with tears as she runs away and off to her room.  She lays in bed, crying and sobbing until her voice is hoarse and her eyes are puffier than her soft, feather filled pillows.

 

When she sees the moon reach its highest point in the sky, she sits up and gathers her pillows.  If she will have to marry Yuuri, she will at least enjoy tonight as if it’s her last night of freedom.

 

She doesn’t get far down the hall before she is stopped by the smaller guard.

 

“Move, Guard Kurosaki.  I’m leaving.” Rin orders.

 

“I can’t allow you that.” Kurosaki answers sternly.

 

“Please.” Rin begs. “Let me go.  Let me live.  Let me feel freedom before my father forces me to marry that awful Prince.”

 

Kurosaki’s eyebrow twitches as he thinks quietly.  “I’ll cover for you one last time.” He promises. “Just come back safely.”

 

Rin nods.  She starts to leave before she turns back to hug the guard.  “Thanks.”

 

“Your father just loves you.” He says to her, softly. “He wants the best for you.”

 

“He doesn’t know what’s best for me.” She whispers. “He just wishes he knew.”

 

Kurosaki doesn’t stop her from leaving.  From what little Rin knows of his life, he has a sister around her age back home.  Maybe, in some way, he did understand her father’s position.

 

Rin knows her father loves her dearly.  He used to be much softer and kinder before her mother had died.  After the cold had made her so sick, Rin was never allowed outside again.  Rin knows her father wants to prevent his wife’s untimely death from happening to her.  However, Rin couldn’t live a life that wasn’t her own.  She certainly wouldn’t want to live a life as a Queen beside Yuuri of Ifnous.

 

When Rin walks out into the clearing, she goes to hug her beloved dragon.  She sits quietly, her arms wrapped around his neck as she tells him about her father’s newest plan.

 

“I won’t… see you anymore.” Rin cries.

 

She buries her face into Yuugo’s soft neck and sobs.  Before long, the emotional exhaustion is enough to lull her to sleep.

 

When Rin wakes, she finds herself all alone.  Her dragon is gone.  She searches around herself frantically, panicking when she can’t spot him anywhere.

 

“Yuugo!” She cries.  “Please, where did you go?”

 

“Geeze, I’m right here.” A voice calls from the trees.

 

Rin’s blood goes cold as she turns towards the sound.  The voice sounded boyish, youthful and annoyed.

 

“Yuugo?” Rin mumbles, wondering if she were still dreaming.

 

“Don’t look!” The voice scolds.

 

Rin’s eyes fall on a young man.  At first she notices that he is shirtless.  She spots a long scar across his chest before her eyes travel much too low.  She squeaks in shock, never have seeing a nude man before.  She covers her eyes, trying to ignore the naked man that stood before her.

 

“Who are you?” Rin demands, her voice too loud from embarrassment.

 

“I’m Yuugo!” The man argues.

 

“Yuugo is a dragon!” She argues back.

 

“Geeze…” The man sighs.  “What do I have to do to prove it to you?  Let’s see… You’re Rin.  Princess to the Algiinor Kingdom.  Your father locks you away but you still come to visit me every night.  You love mathematics and physics, but you hate history.  You snore in your sleep.  You have a birthmark on your ankle.”

 

Rin hides her ankle from his sight.  “That doesn’t prove anything to me.”

 

“What about this?” The man gestures to the scar on his chest. “Your dragon friend had a scar here too.”

 

Rin squints at him. “Okay, then.  If you are Yuugo, then tell me… How come you’re a human?”

 

“I’m Prince Yuugo from the Kingdom of Nychros.  My father, the King, passed away and I was supposed to become the new King.  I was… until my father’s Duke, Duke Jean Michel Roget decided that he wanted the throne so he had a witch put a curse on me to turn me into a dragon.  I panicked and flew away from my kingdom, landed in this clearing with an injured wing so I couldn’t go home.  Then you came here and you started visiting me.  I healed my wing and now I’m human again.  I guess the curse wore off.  Jean was always really cheap.”

 

“Why should I believe you?” Rin presses.  How was she supposed to believe him so easily?  All her years locked away hadn’t made her too naive.  She wouldn’t simply fall for his words.

 

“Rin…  I am Yuugo… What is there for me to lie to you about?  You came to visit me here every night.  I took you and we flew through the sky.  I saw you bathe in the stream.”

 

“You saw me bathing?” Rin groans.  So maybe he was Yuugo…

 

“I didn’t look!  You know that!” Yuugo defends himself.  Rin barely hears him mutter under his breath.  “I mean, you looked beautiful but I didn’t stare.”

 

“So you know that I’m going to get married?” Rin asks.

 

“Yeah.” Yuugo nods. “I’m sorry about that.”

 

Rin crosses her arms over her chest.  “I guess you’ll be going back to your Kingdom then.  You can go do whatever you want and I’ll go marry a prince I’ve never even liked.”

 

Yuugo scratches the back of his head.  “Rin.” He calls quietly.

 

“Just go home.” Rin mutters.  “You dumb dragon.”

 

“Rin.”  Yuugo fights for the right words.  “I… want to take you home with me too.”

 

Rin’s head perks up.  “What?”

 

“I want to take you home with me.  Your father keeps you locked up, but I won’t.  I’ve seen how happy you are out here and I think you deserve to be free.  If I take you home with me, you can be my Queen and I’ll never keep you trapped.”

 

Rin sits in silence for a moment.  It feels like a fairytale moment.  She feels the way that Rapunzel must have felt when the prince had come for her to set her free.  Maybe she was like the Sleeping Beauty who was woken from her nightmares or like the Littlest Mermaid who left her home for a happier land that she had always admired from the sea.

 

Rin has read so many fairy tales in her life.  For so long, she dreamed and wished and ached to be like one of the heroines written in those aging, yellowed pages.  She wanted to be freed of her shackles, freed of her father’s curse that he had placed on her heart when she was too young to understand, she wanted to have her happy ending.

 

Rin nods quietly.  “I’ll be your Queen if you’ll be my King.”

 

Yuugo breaks out into that same, puppy dog grin.  It still looked so goofy, even on his human face.

 

Rin gives him her mantel to cover himself and they walk through the woods together.  She feels so much more aware of him now that he was human.  He looked handsome, in her opinion.  He had that same charm about he that he did when he was a dragon.  He had that same playfulness, that same cheerful bounce to his step.  He was, in all honesty, really cute.

 

“Go on home.” Yuugo tells her.  “I’ll wait for you to make it back to your room before I reveal myself.”

 

“I hope this will work.” Rin prays.

 

“Of course it will.” Yuugo says confidently, pounding a fist to his chest.  His next words are breathless from the impact it had on his lungs. “I hope.”

 

Before Rin leaves, she reaches out to touch his hand gently.  She thinks that in her books, this is the part that the heroine would kiss the prince.  However, this was her own fairy tale story, she would wait to kiss him.  For now, she just wanted to touch his hand to feel the reassuring warmth of his skin.

 

She swears that his face turns red when she touches him.  It’s so hard to tell in the low lighting but she would be willing to bet her father’s throne on it.

 

She runs home to her room, dodging all but her guard, Kurosaki.

 

“Apollo keeps asking about you.  You better get into bed.  I told him to leave you alone while you slept but he’s been suspicious.” He scolds as Rin squeezes past him.

 

“Alright.” Rin agrees.

 

Kurosaki’s jaw drops slightly at her sudden obedience.  A first, for the stubborn princess.  He stammers for something to say but Rin is gone before he can collect his thoughts.

 

Rin goes to lay in bed until  Yuugo can make his appearance.  She’s sure that it will cause a huge commotion.  A missing prince ending up at their door?  She doubts it will take more than two minutes for the news to reach her.

 

She grows worried when she sees the sunrise.  Did he lie to her?  Was it just a cruel trick?  Was he some kind of spy sent by her father to catch her breaking the law he had hung over her head?

 

“My Princess!” The door bursts open just as Rin was about to get out of bed to check for herself.   Her handmaid stands in the doorway looking as if she had just walked through a windstorm. “The Prince of Nychros is here!  He travelled all this way to ask you to marry him.”

 

Rin perks up.  He really did pull through.  “Let me meet him!” She demands.  

 

Her handmaid will not permit her to leave until she is wearing her best dress and has her hair piled into a beautifully intricate bun.  Rin doesn’t understand how a woman with so much energy and enthusiasm for everything could manage all those tiny braids without any struggling.  Whatever magic her fingers possessed, Rin knew she would never in a thousand years reach that level of fine detail.

 

She is guided through the halls carefully.  Rin feels like a too full teacup that had to be carried delicately or else it would overflow and spill.  She holds her breath, wondering what Yuugo must have said to her father.  She was still engaged to Yuuri, a sudden new engagement wouldn’t change her father’s heart so easily.

 

When she reaches the grand hall, her eyes fall onto Yuugo.  He sits, fully dressed this time thankfully, beside her father at the head of the grand dining table.

 

“Rin.” Her father calls to her.  “This is Prince Yuugo of Nychros.  He has travelled far and wide to come to ask for your hand in marriage.”

 

“Did you accept his offer, Father?” Rin asks, heart pounding away at her ribcage.

 

“I haven’t.  It is unfortunate.  My daughter is already engaged to Prince Yuuri of Ifnous.  I’m afraid that I will have to decline your gracious offer.”

 

Rin’s heart sinks along with her whole body.  This couldn’t be happening.  Just when she was so close, it was all snatched away from her again.  

 

She falls to her knees by her father’s feet.  She grips at his pant leg and begs.  “Father, please.  I don’t want to marry Prince Yuuri.  Allow me to marry Prince Yuugo.  Please, Father.  I’ve begged you for so much all my life, just this once, I ask of you to give me what I want.”

 

She closes her eyes tight, too afraid of his answer.  Her father’s heart had been so hard ever since her mother had passed away.  She missed the father that used to hold her up and spin her around, the father that tucked her into bed every night and listened to her mother’s stories with her, she missed the man whose heart was soft and kind.  He wasn’t the same man anymore.

 

“Rin…” He starts.  “Do you want to marry Prince Yuugo?”

 

“I do!” Rin promises.  He’s been the only one that listened to her, the one to comfort her, the one that she left to meet night after night to sit by his side and feel like she had a friend for once.

 

“I… won’t deny you your happiness.  If you truly want to marry him, then I’ll give him your hand.”

 

Rin’s eyes start to swim with tears.  She sniffs, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve.  “Oh Father, thank you… Thank you so much.”

 

The wedding is grand, to say the least.  After Yuugo goes home to his Kingdom, Duke Jean Michel Roger is quickly pulled from the throne and thrown straight into the dungeon to be sentenced for his crimes against the Royal Family and against the Kingdom of Nychros.

 

The wedding is to celebrate not only the fact that their Prince was going to be married, but also to celebrate his return after he had gone missing and to celebrate his coronation as King to the throne.

 

The whole day passes with Rin being decorated with an endless array of fancy jewelry and beautiful flowers.  By the end of it, she feels as if she is carrying almost half her own body weight in all of those layers of heavy fabric, flower bouquets and strings of jewels.

 

She stares out the window at the Kingdom that would become hers.  The land out there was so beautiful, so much like the clearing that she and Yuugo had met in.  She can’t wait to be able to be a part of it, instead of a spectator from a window.

 

When she walks down the beautiful hall to meet her Prince, she can’t help but tear up.  This was it, this was her happy ending.  Somehow she had found her best friend in the form of a scaly beast that turned out to be a handsome prince.  Now her best friend would be her husband and her King.

 

They exchange the vows written for them, ones that were so formal and proper that Rin wanted to laugh when she heard Yuugo speak them.  When he kisses her for the first time afterwards, he whispers to her the same promise he had made in the clearing.  He would never keep her trapped, she was finally allowed to be free.

 

He tastes sweet and clean, like the crisp air of a winter morning.  The way he holds her is so soft, not as if she were too delicate to touch but as if she were a fire too hot to touch without being burned.  She can feel hesitation in his touch, too afraid to kiss her any further in front of so many people.

 

After all the dancing, all the drinking and all the goodbyes she makes to her family, Yuugo leads her to their new bedroom where they lay awake and snicker to each other drunkenly about the time he flew her through the stars.

 

When she wakes up the next morning, she’s caught in his embrace, held tight in the reassurance that he loved her too.

 

Rin enjoys all her freedom.  Although she can’t fly through the beautiful skies anymore, she finds herself enjoying the feeling of riding a beautiful, white stallion.  She enjoys the feeling of the wind through her hair and the feeling of impact as her steed’s hooves hit and leave the ground.  Mostly, she enjoys Yuugo’s company when they ride together.

 

The only time she stops riding is when she learns that she is pregnant with the next heir of Nychros.  Instead of riding, she sunbathes in fields of wild flowers and tall grass.  She reads fairy tales out loud to her growing stomach as Yuugo sits by her side.

 

She can’t wait to read her child her own fairy tale.  The tale about a King who felt so much shaking fear that he locked the lonely Princess away.  The tale about a stubborn Princess who ran away to talk to her dragon best friend every night.  The tale about a Prince that was cursed to be a dragon, that fell in love with an imprisoned Princess and took her away to set her free.

 

She had her happy, fairy tale ending.


End file.
